Pages

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

From the early years sending out short stories to lit mags and waiting up to TWO YEARS for a rejection (cough, Zoetrope, cough cough).

To sending out queries and sample chapters of my novel month after month trying to get an agent.

To submitting to publishers and waiting a year for my first novel NOT to sell, and then another eight months for my second novel to finally sell.

Of course, once the novel did sell, I only had to wait another 18 months or so for it to actually hit bookstores (and even then, they arrived late). And once the month or two of promotion for the new novel was over, I went back to... waiting.

If you were to ask me what the worst part about being a writer is, I'd have to say it's the waiting (and obviously, the worst part of the waiting is the waiting to get paid). And while there are some significant downsides to the new ebook revolution, the biggest UPSIDE is that the waiting is over.

I can put an ebook online any time I freakin' want to (instead of waiting 18 months for a publisher to put it out) and get paid with each individual sale (as opposed to waiting for years to see if royalties will ever appear... which, due to creative accounting, they won't).